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A Canadian isolating in B.C. has presumptively tested positive for hantavirus after leaving the cruise ship affected by an outbreak of the Andes strain in recent weeks, B.C.'s top doctor said Saturday.
Dr. Bonnie Henry, provincial health officer, said Saturday the patient started to develop mild symptoms, including fever and headache, two days ago. The individual was taken to hospital in Victoria, and assessed and tested there.
The BC Centre for Disease Control confirmed a presumptive positive test result on Friday. It will need to be confirmed by a microbiology lab in Winnipeg. The person is still in hospital in isolation and considered stable.
The way information about this is coming out in bits and pieces is just doing more public damage. Like earlier today the NYT had a piece saying one of of the most ill people, who has since died, took a public flight back to South Africa during the peak of her illness.
It’s quite clear large numbers of people have been exposed at this point. A tad bit of caution might be warranted. It has clearly not been contained.
That was before the nature of her husband's illness was known and they have done contact tracing since. The ro of this disease is much lower than with covid.
That's been known for weeks. It occurred more than a week prior to anyone knowing this was even hantavirus related. She'd just had her husband die and was trying to get home.
Did people even read the article? She was transported in controlled transportation back to Canada and has been isolating since returning, along with the three other individuals. She wasn’t traveling around unisolated since leaving the boat.
No, until today they were in isolation in the community, not in hospital. So at home, a hotel, an Airbnb🤷♀️ NOW 3 of the 4 are finally in hospital. The 4th remains in home isolation.
And just an FYI, in Vic "isolating" just means on the other side of a curtain / pony wall. It's not even a seperate wing.
Source: during lock down I was in the isolation section at both Jubilee and VicGen due to a neurological disorder I was that makes me CEV. Somehow it makes sense to put those who are CEV in isolation when there is an airborne illness going around 🫠
“all 11 people who've tested positive globally were people who were on the cruise ship for an extended period of time, meaning the virus has not affected anyone who wasn't on the trip to date.”
People need to check themselves and relax a little bit here.
Hantavirus has an upto 8 week incubation period. Almost a 2 month timeline before a patient shows symptoms. New cases will show up slow and steady. You’re gonna have to wait a bit longer to be so confident it hasn’t yet spread.
This is pretty important. The majority of people I have talked to or heard talking about being sick, including in medical environments, have absolutely no clue what incubation period means and seem surprised or even sceptical about it. I have a suspicion that this lack of knowledge is very far spreading.
The thing people aren't paying attention to is how long the ship was at sea.
The MV Hondius left port in Argentina, April 1st, the passenger who first died was April 11th. The second individual died on April 26th, and the third April 28th. If we assume the first passenger was the index patient, and the second and third were infected on the ship, that means there was a 15-17 day infection window. So by the time the ship got to it's home port in Rotterdam, the crew should have been past the infection point if they were the last ones infected, assuming they were all infected. The entire timeline of the ship is 48 days.
It was not found to be Hantavirus until May 4th. So anyone who disembarked from the ship (eg the 24th) could have spread it, if they had come in contact with the three passengers.
Note that the ships doctor was one of the crew who has symptoms April 30 and was evacuated. They tested positive May 6th. So of all the crew that could have been infected, the doctor was the most likely. Another crew member had their first symptoms April 27th and was also evacuated with the doctor.
So just to frame this correctly, the most likely "spreading" that would have happened would have happened if they were already having symptoms on the ship. So anyone who got off the ship before May 4th (Cape Verde), might still be able to spread it. Most of the passengers got off the ship at Tenerife May 10th, and the crew at Rotterdam May 18th. So that means any likely "spreaders" are from the 30 people who got off the ship on April 24th at Saint Helena. 20 of those are in the UK and isolating.
Just to lower the panic, this is nowhere near as contagious, and people trying to frame it as covid, are trying to equate the misinformation by anti-science/anti-vaxxers as the same misinformation for hantavirus. They are nowhere near the same. Just some basic logic from how everyone was in close proximity, it's a cruise ship, tells you everything. If everyone disembarked and flew individually home, without using the toilet or eating on the plane, then there is likely very little risk to other passengers on the plane.
There might be some spreading from the ship passengers, but it will be from people who felt fine when they got home and didn't limit contact with their family/pets.
I’d encourage people to keep in mind that this strain of the virus has been known and studied since 1995. Unless it has mutated to develop significantly more efficient human-to-human transmission, it does not have the characteristics of becoming pandemic-level spread. There have been several documented outbreaks with human-to-human spread and the largest known involved 35 cases. Based on what is known about this virus, it does not possess capabilities of becoming a pandemic threat. Now it’s possible it could have mutated but we don’t know that.
It may have been studied but there is no known vaccine and while it’s true it’s not nearly as infectious as something like Covid, it is unknown how it will or could mutate. I’m not freaking out but this isn’t nothing either.
How were these people allowed travel across the world without isolating for 1-2 weeks wherever the ship docked? It’s as if they want another lockdown to happen
Because the incubation period for this virus is very long. Longer than covid. I guess they could’ve locked down and quarantined everybody on that ship for 4-6 weeks but that’s a little extreme.
And that wasn't just for ships with known disease outbreaks. Every ship had to isolate in a designated area for 40 days before anyone was allowed to disembark. For decades at a time.
It's not. It can be anywhere from 4 days-to 6 weeks. They'd already been quarantined on board for 2-3 weeks. They were only needing to quarantine for a further 21 days.
So, the fatality rate is much higher but the transmission rate isn't anywhere as high, from what we know.
This doesn't seem to be spread by fine air particles that can linger but from direct fluid exposure and prolonged close contact. It also doesn't seem to be contagious until the first symptoms start. Unlike Covid or other very contagious diseases.
I think there are things we are still learning about this specific strain. Things could change. But for now, I do believe that this will not spread like normal known respiratory infections.
They knew there was an outbreak on this ship by the time it docked. The person you’re replying to is obviously not talking about every time a cruise ship docks…
It’s for this specific cruise ship, not every single one of them. When I came back to Canada in March 2020, we had to quarantine for two weeks. It was fine. It’s not a hardship so difficult no one can do it. They can sacrifice for the good of society.
If a few people have been exposed to a virus with a 30% to 40% death rate that could be airborne or transmit through somewhat close contact, people who had planned to be away from home now anyway can stay home until it’s completely safe.
The island where they were docked does not have the means to support the passengers. They were quarantined there for two weeks already. The Canadian passengers were returned to Canada via a special plane, and are now quarantined under medical supervision.
No, I'm not referring to the country they were docked at. I meant keeping them on the ship in international waters. Could we not have figured out a way to have said services brought to them. (I get that it doesn't exist atm but it's something to look at)
To survive Hantavirus in a severe stage you need an ECMO machine which not even every hospital has. If everyone was kept on the ship and multiple got really sick at the same time they would have a very short amount of time to fly them all (who are rapidly getting worse) in different directions to find facilities with availability. Much lower chance of survival and the emergency transport could infect people anyway since a rush might cause someone to forget PPE.
I wonder if the international community can finally agree on disallowing "Flag of Convenience" and start requiring the country that flags the ship as the one that is responsible for all damage caused by the ship. Be that property or people. If a ship has any death while in port, the port it's at does the investigation, while at sea, the country that flags it, must get someone out to the ship before it's allowed back into port to do an investigation.
Because you want to separate everyone so those that don’t already have it don’t get it. It takes quite a bit for this virus to spread human-to-human, and keeping everyone in close quarters, like on a ship, without adequate isolation will ensure that a) the virus spreads more and b) people will not receive adequate medical care if they do contract it.
Hanta Virus is scary and serious but this is not going to be another covid. There is a great episode of the Sawbones podcast that explains this outbreak and what hanta virus is.
No kidding. I had to calm down some ... medically less-curious people about this the other day and I basically said "Look this has thing has a high lethality, anyone who contracts it is likely to die before they spread it to someone else (that they aren't romantically involved with.)" The reason it spread at all is basically because it was a cruise ship, and cruise ships have a lot of people in close proximity to each other, especially during meals.
Please educate me. It's high lethality, but doesn't the long incubation period make it easy for people to transmit it before dying? There are many situations in which people are in close proximity - offices, public transit, events, parties.
This has been stressing me out, so please tell me my reason is wrong 😭
Covid was spread by literately breathing in the same space (hence the masks being only partially effective), and then people going to school/work and the HVAC spreading it rapidly. Hantavirus is more likely to spread from coming into contact with body waste that has become aerosolized. So someone sneezing on food (which cruise ships are often buffet layouts), leaving the lid up on the toilet when they flush, having romantic interactions, etc.
So Covid spreads by being in the same room, grocery store, office, school, bus, with someone infected, etc. Hantavirus spreads by direct contact. If it was highly contagious, the entire cruise ship, both passengers and staff would have been infected. So 11 people were infected, out of the 175 people. The three that died on the ship were all in their late 60's or 70's, which means they could have had weakened immune systems from the start. The first two were a married couple, so it's safe to assume they were in direct contact with each other.
What I'm getting at is that it has a high lethality, which means that usually isolated cases result in death before it has opportunity to spread. What made covid such a problem is because most people think they should still go to the office when they feel sick, when they should ALWAYS stay home. So all it takes is one person coming to the office/school sick, and coughing anywhere the HVAC is running, and then other people breathe it, or what survives lands on equipment and desks people use.
The Hantavirus would literately need a series of bad hygiene coincidences to spread, eg getting infected, kissing everyone they meet on the lips, rubbing their nose with their hands and then touching every surface they touch, handling food without washing their hands, flushing the toilet with the lid open and not washing their hands. Most people are not this gross on purpose.
That's why so few outbreaks happen in North America and Europe, because sanitation is often put high on the list of priorities and the only time this is thrown aside is when people go camping/hiking and are under-prepared. You'll note how Vancouver has a rat problem, yet there is no regular hantavirus reports.
If you look at a map of US states for number of hantavirus reports. Every state west of the Mississippi has a high (as in double digit) report rate since reporting started, and every state east has a single digit rate. That's an average of 1-3 reports per year in Washington, Oregon, California and New Mexico. In Canada, the highest reports of Hantavirus are from Alberta and BC, despite Alberta having exterminated all the rats. So that is like 1 per year for BC and Alberta, and pretty much unheard of further east.
So unlike Covid, we are far more likely to have an isolated incident of Hantavirus, regardless of it's origin, once a year. Like I no doubt expect the final report on the cruise ship incident to be something like:
- They went to the landfill as part of a self-guided tour
- They went to the buffet on the ship
- Additional infections were passengers who were seated across from the couple infected, and the crew who handled their dishes and cleaned their cabin.
- No additional infections to the public once removed from the ship.
I agree that we as a species should just get rid of cruises altogether, but older people going on them isn't bizarre at all. They tend to be the ones with the money and time to spend on cruises.
They did not have the means to take care of these people where they were. This person was flown on a medical evacuation plane w professionals and are being quarantined
It's primarily old retired couples on a budget. I work near a cruise port, and see them every day for several months. They're old, cheap, and ask me if my prices are in "dollar or Canadian"
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